Former Vice President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, said he will constitute an independent group of financial, audit, technology and public-accounting experts to investigate available records relating to President Bola Tinubu’s cash-transfers and palliative payments, if he wins the 2027 presidential election.
Atiku who is the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), said there is inconsistency in the number of households Tinubu claimed to have to have benefited from his government’s cash transfers.
The former vice president in a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, noted that the Tinubu administration claimed that more than ₦600 billion had been disbursed to over 10 million households, after it had earlier told Nigerians that about 15 million households benefited from the programme.
“It now appears that the Tinubu administration cannot give Nigerians a coherent account of how many households actually benefited from its intervention programme, while significant portions of the expenditure have failed to withstand independent audit scrutiny,” Atiku said.
He stated that the Auditor-General of the Federation, Shaakaa Chira, who was appointed by the Tinubu administration in October 2023, reportedly quarried the ₦33.75 billion the administration claimed to was paid to 3.29 million beneficiaries, as well as ₦36.74 billion reportedly paid without pre-payment audit and ₦4.62 billion for which payment vouchers were not produced.
“These cannot be dismissed as another set of bogus figures buried in government accounts.
“These are resources appropriated in the name of poor Nigerians who desperately need protection from a cost-of-living crisis aggravated by this administration’s rash economic policies,” Atiku said.
The ADC candidate described the audit findings surrounding ₦33.75 billion reportedly paid to 3.29 million vulnerable Nigerian households as an indictment to the Tinubu administration, noting that this is a government that took away the poor man’s subsidy, increased his taxes and tariffs, promised support, and is now confronted with serious questions over whether that support ever reached him.
He described the amount as a mockery, and said it exposed the inadequacy of Tinubu’s claimed poverty intervention.
According to him, ₦33.75 billion divided among 3.29 million vulnerable households amounts to barely ₦10,258 per household.
“The intervention is insultingly small, yet even that small amount cannot be cleanly accounted for.
“If money meant for hungry Nigerians cannot be satisfactorily traced while access to records required for accountability is frustrated, then what we are witnessing is unapologetic wickedness against the poor.
“You cannot punish people with hardship and then play hide-and-seek with money appropriated in their name,” Atiku said.
He promised to punish an government official find guilty of diverting, misapplied or misappropriated funds meant for vulnerable Nigerians.
“The poor have already paid enough through higher fuel prices, food costs, electricity bills, transportation fares and taxes. They must not also be made to lose the money appropriated in their name,” he added.
